On February 25th, the White House has proposed a bipartisan, half-day televised summit on health care. It is unclear as to whether this is a publicity stunt by the Obama Administration or a good faith effort to negotiate with Republicans to come up with a bipartisan health care reform bill. The Washington Post reports today many Republicans are pushing back and urging the White House to scrap Obamacare as a precondition to any negotiation. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) sent a letter to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel objecting to the House and Senate versions of Obamacare being the base line bills of the negotiations. Hopefully, this summit meeting is more than the President checking off a campaign promise to have all health care negotiations on C-SPAN.
If this summit is a genuine start to bipartisan negotiations, then a few issues need to be settled before the meeting:
1. Start Over – The American people have rejected Obamacare and they want Congress and the Obama Administration to start over from scratch. The election of Scott Brown as Senator from Massachusetts was a strong message, from a liberal state, that Obamacare is not popular with the American people. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll indicates that 31% think the President’s health care plan is a good idea v. 46% a bad idea. CNN/Opinion Research has the numbers at 38% in favor and 58% opposed. It is clear that a minority in Congress is representing the will of a majority of Americans who think Obamacare is a bad idea and it is time for liberals in Congress and the Obama Administration to start listening to the American people. With the overwhelming weight of polling data and election results in Massachusetts indicating widespread opposition, it is time to start over.
2. Take Reconciliation off the Table – The President needs to state publicly that he will not support partisan efforts in Congress to use reconciliation procedures as a mechanism to railroad through pending versions of Obamacare. Reconciliation, commonly referred to as the Nuclear Option in the Senate, allows the supporters of Obamacare to avoid a filibuster in the Senate and ignore the traditional rules that would allow extended debate and amendment. Using reconciliation and relying on one party’s votes to pass an unpopular approach to health care reform would not translate into a bipartisan solution to comprehensive health care reform.
3. Transparency – Transparency has to be any part of a summit and it does not begin and end with the publicly broadcast meeting. First, what may be necessary is for the Obama Administration, Republican Leaders, Democrat Leaders and Moderate Democrats have a private meeting, before any planned public summit to clear the air. There is nothing wrong with having a private meeting to provide an opportunity for members to speak freely and build some needed trust. Right now, there is no trust and there has been a complete breakdown in communication. Maybe they could sit and discuss the core elements of a true bipartisan plan in private, and then have a public summit to air any agreement over a half day. A meeting and summit does not mitigate the need for public hearings in Congress and other means to transparently consider any new elements of a health care bill. The White House had been actively engaged in closed door negotiations as recently as the first week of this year with lobbyists and congressional leaders in a manner that excluded moderate Democrats, Republicans and the American people. This needs to end. It is reasonable for members of Congress to have informal negotiations at times, yet the work product should be subject to transparent hearings in the House and Senate committees of jurisdiction. Any deal should be vetted with the American people and subject to a transparent process.
The great danger in this process is that the Obama Administration checks off a campaign promise then goes on with business as usual. This summit can’t merely be a gimmick where the President lectures Republicans and Republicans lecture the President, then the President forges forward with the same Obamacare bill that has been rejected by the American people. This summit should be where the President starts the process over and engages in real negotiations with a broad audience.
The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) is fed up with President Barack Obama and his administration. The 43-member caucus, led by Representative Maxine Waters (D-Ca), says that Barack Obama is not listening to the needs of African Americans on the important issues of the day. The nation’s first African American president, a candidate who carried 95 percent of the African American vote (versus 4% for his opponent) in the 2008 presidential election, is alienating the African American lawmakers on Capitol Hill, and the lawmakers are threatening to do the unthinkable, vote with the Republicans (GOP).
Rep. Waters suggested the CBC’s 43 members could vote with the GOP to scuttle a variety of Democratic bills if Obama and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel don’t address what she thinks is a lack of understanding of the CBC’s wide-ranging goals.
If the CBC is serious in their threat to side with Republicans, they should start with the one program that has proven to help African American students in the nation’s capitol: the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program.
The Democrats in Congress, including all 43 members of the CBC, voted last February to phase out a program that gives low-income D.C. families a $7,500 voucher to remove their children from often dangerous and failing D.C. Public Schools and allow them to choose a safe and effective education for their children. Most of the current recipients are African American.
This program has been a terrific success and has given parents across the nation’s capital real hope that their children will have a positive future, as one DCOSP parent Carmen Holassie proclaims in The Heritage Foundation’s new documentary Let Me Rise: The Struggle to Save School Choice in the Nation’s Capital:
“I can see my daughter five or ten years from now not living on the poverty level that I’ve been through.”
She goes on to talk about her son, Ronald:
“Without that Washington Scholarship, my son Ronald wouldn’t be the way he is today. Now I can go to bed and sleep and say ‘Thank you, Jesus’ my son has a future, a positive one.”
This is a win-win for the CBC. They would be investing in the future of African American children, and providing parents, like Carmen Holassie a real hope that their children have an opportunity to succeed in America. The CBC would also be joining a growing movement of African American Democrat lawmakers at the state level who are proposing school choice legislation in their states.
The CBC knows that allowing parents to choose a save and effective school for their children is important, which is why 38% of CBC members have at one time sent their own kids to a private school, compared to only 8% of the African American population across America who do so. Joining with school choice supporters across the aisle to reauthorize the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program wouldn’t just send a message to President Obama and his Administration, but also to the entire country that when it comes to education reform in America, the CBC is standing with the kids, and not special interests.